We are living in our guest house for a while, until we get the main house cleaned up and fixed up! It’s a cozy 1 bedroom…. about 650 sq ft in all. Some days it feels smaller, but we’re mostly making it work! 🙂 We are very thankful for the few warms days we’ve had to get the kids outside to play. Hoping to be in the new house in a few months!

For those who don’t know… we’ve moved… again. Get comfy. This is quite a story!

It all started about a year ago, when Alan and I decided we wanted to move out of CA. We knew we wanted to leave this state, and asked God to open doors in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, or Kansas. (Just get us out of here!!) We took a trip to OK in July and fell in love with the area. We just needed a job for Alan. He applied for about 30 different jobs in the midwest. And we waited… and waited. Nothing ever came of it.

Ok, God… so perhaps an out of state move is not in your plans for us. But we were really looking forward to having more land, a garden, maybe some chickens? Alan would love a place to work on cars. Perhaps we can find something like that here in Tehachapi?

We began looking for a house with land and a workshop for Alan (or space to build one). Alan found a 4 bedroom house on 1 acre with a huge, no, HUGE workshop. We went to look at it… built in 1980 and needed a lot of work! We looked at 2 other houses that day, and Greg said the first one was his favorite. We poked fun at him for liking the “ugly house”. We looked at about 10 other houses…. some more than once. Last laugh was on us, as we kept coming back to the “ugly house”.

We decided to put in an offer. It was bank owned, so we knew it could take a while. We still needed to list our house in town, and that could take 6 months to sell. If we got the “ugly house”, we knew we’d be making double house payments for a while until the other house sold.

We listed our house for sale on a Friday afternoon. We were so excited to have a showing on the following Monday, but nothing came of it. On Thursday, there was another showing — and on Thursday evening, we got an offer?!

It took a few days to agree on a price and particulars, but our agent was notified by phone that our counter offer was accepted by the buyer. Guess what was coming in on his fax at the same time? Notification from the bank that our offer to buy the “ugly house” had been accepted. How’s that for timing?!

Long story short (Not sure that is possible with me)… we closed escrow on both houses in 45 days. We are now living in the guest house on the new property while we transform the “ugly house” into the “lovely house”.

There are so many details of this adventure that have God’s signature all over them.

1. In a dismal real estate market, with foreclosures and short sales all around our neighborhood, God sold our house in 6 days. I guess we were trying to move in the wrong direction before!

2. As a newbie homeschool mom, God spared me the stress of keeping a perfectly clean “model home” for a long listing period.

3. Due to state testing, the kids did not have homeschool assignments during the week of our move!

4. One evening, we needed to sign a document for the escrow company. Alan received it in a email and we needed to print it on 8 x 14 paper and return the next morning, or risk delaying the escrow. I went to Kmart at 9pm only to find they don’t sell 8 x 14 paper. Our only office supply store is not open until morning, and Alan has to go to work! The lady stocking the shelves at Kmart goes to the back and brings me about 10 sheets… says they don’t use it anymore for the their store flyers and gave it to me for FREE. I am certian I would not have found it anywhere else in town that night.

5. We received boxes from neighbors, friends, and businesses…. and had plenty!

6. Several wonderful friends volunteered to watch our children so I could pack. Some came to help pack and clean on moving day. My parents were gave 110% and helped the move go smoothly.

7. I’ve been wanting to create this blog post for days! Our internet was scheduled to be hooked up Wednesday. Here we are, Monday night… and it’s up and running already!

There have been a few bumps in the road, but I have total confidence that God orchestrated every detail for our good. I’m still shaking my head in amazement that He would do this for us. I’m anxious to see how we can serve God in our new home, as He writes the next chapter of this adventure!

We’ve starting a lot of new projects for the new year! The biggest will be homeschooling Greg and Camille. Today should have been our first homeschool day, but snow closed all schools today so we can not get into the charter school office to pick up our books and schedule. Tomorrow for sure 🙂

Next on my list is to change the size of our family! No, we’re not pregnant… but I have been longing for another baby. Alan is not quite on board with this…. so in the mean time, I’ll be working on size reduction (as in MY size!!!) I’d like to lose 10-15 pounds, unless God blesses me with a reason to gain 40!

I’m also thinking about spring… and pondering a garden this year. We’ve never had much luck with one, but I’m hoping this year will be different. I’m sure it will be a lot of work, but I am hoping with the kids home, they can help.

These are the main goals. Hopefully I can make some progress in them and then see what else I can add to the agenda. Being a good wife, mother, and teacher will surely consume the bulk of my year… and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Despite my best efforts to convince Camille to cancel her birthday, she decided she DOES want to be SIX! Oh, well… I tried. Maybe I can hit the rewind button while she sleeps tonight? I’m just not ready for her to grow up. We celebrated tonight with pizza dinner with her grandparents and the cake she helped decorate. Happy Birthday Camille-Bear!

Here we are…. the middle of December. Did I plan to take a whole year off from blogging? Never. But, life happens! I wish I could say I’ve been busy all year doing all the things I talked about in my last post. Although some progress has been made, I know I still have work to do in 2011 🙂

I’ve been facebook free for over a month now…. so I think it’s time to resurrect this dusty ol’ blog. Hopefully, there will be some more regular posting going on around here.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

PS – It took me 2 days to figure out how to log in and post this… how sad is that? More posts coming in 2011, I promise!